Integrity Knights
by lorephunk
Summary: Waking into a strange new world after ending the tragedy of SAO, Kazuto and Asuna are given a chance to join an elite taskforce, lead by Kayaba Akihiko himself, to unitedly fight the evolving threats of the 21st century cyber-war.
1. Chapter 1

It had begun when the 75th dungeon boss did not spawn in the raid party's field of view.

Asuna, just as thrown for a loop as anybody else in the room, skidded to a halt between Kirito, who was focused on observing every single angle of attack a mob could take firstly against herself, then his own self; and Heathcliff, slowly circling in place, searching specifically for the boss.

"This is unexpected..." Her guild leader had muttered.

An unfortunate series of events coalesced into one large blur after that.

An hour later, with Kirito's back pressing against her own in a team effort to stay upright, those three words sidled back into her mind and continued to tick away. Why would anyone have needed to say such a sentence out loud? They all knew exactly what they had to expect; that they _had no clue_ what to expect. With ten scouts lost in a prior failed 'this is what to expect' attempt, the clearers understood only that they were going in blind.

Exhausted and overjoyed to be alive, she may be. But Asuna, an academically outstanding student with respect for grammar far beyond the norm, couldn't overlook this vernacular oddity.

She watched him, briefly. He stood facing away from them, with his sword and shield positioned at ease before him. Tall and composed as ever.

"Kirito? I'm sending you a PM." An utterance as quiet as possible. She felt him shift as her slender fingers flew over immaterial keys. Visible, thankfully, only to their user.

{Heathcliff said something weird earlier. Like he was surprised that... thing didn't appear right away. It's bothering me and I don't know why.} Jabbing out at the send button, Asuna eyed her guildmaster again, fast as lightning, almost like she had a fear of being caught passing answers in an exam. Which was silly, given how far removed such a setting was from her current one.

She found herself unable to laugh despite the obvious fallacy. Kirito's reply flashed in her HUD.

{I was thinking about the same thing. Asuna, **don't react**. Heathcliff is Kayaba. That has to be why he said it, he didn't expect the boss to deviate like it did.}

 _'...Excuse me?'_

While her mind reeled, her fingers went into auto-pilot mode. {Are you sure? When the hell were you going to tell me?} _'And where did this even come from?'_

In retrospect, she would've asked Kirito if he had gone insane instead. But what had they got to lose at this point, really? She could feel he was right, he had to be.

{Right now, I swear. Turn towards him slightly and wait for my signal. I'm gonna hit him, see what happens. Back me up but don't get too close, he has game master powers. He used them in our duel.}

 _'Damn it, Kirito!'_ How long had he been holding on to this?

This was it then. Pivoting slowly, she lined up with their new shared target; before even looking at Kirito, Asuna scrabbled around in the dirt to find and hold onto his hand. What scared her most, as usual, in this situation was the boy's _goddamn foolhardiness._

He gripped her hand back, and she finally locked eyes with him. Much like when he had crucified his reputation and become a 'Beater', these stakes thrown on the table were extreme. If this turned out to be unfounded... she hoped the overwhelming worry in her heart for his wellbeing was obvious enough in her expression.

As he gazed back, putting on that carefree smile that had come to soothe her emotions so much, she couldn't help but smile softly too - even make a quip, ignoring how the corners of her eyes were beginning to feel damp.

"Some boss battle, huh?" Her estimations of this ending well were rapidly slimming. Already, fourteen people had died in this particular hellhole; and now they were plotting to attack Heathcliff of all people. Leader of a significant portion of the clearers, a player who's health had never been seen to drop below the halfway mark. Asuna trusted Kirito like no other, trusted his instinct was correct, as he did for her... but she'd drop dead herself before she allowed him to become the fifteenth. And whether he was wrong or right, he was about to risk just that.

Leaning towards her, gently running his thumb in circles on the back of her hand, he whispered back.

"One last fight. I promised I'd get you home." They spent a moment in silence, sharing resolution.

"Well you goddamn better make sure you come with me." That made him chuckle, gravitas asides.

His free hand moved to his black sword's hilt. "Let's do this."

Heathcliff's broad back was wide and suddenly very invitingly open. Asuna had a very itchy swordhand.

Kirito coiled, and burst forward, tailed _very_ closely by a flash of white and red.

There was no telling exactly how fast they closed the gap, but none of their friends or acquaintances reacted before a sword skill thundered against the paladin's armour - and dissipated, leaving its executor frozen in cooldown momentarily. Heads began to turn towards the source of the pitched soundwave that rushed over them; Asuna snapped into position on Kirito's flank, rapier fixed at half-guard extending over his elbow, directly at a fluorescent indigo label hanging in midair.

Immediately above the connecting point of sword and cuirass.

[IMMORTAL OBJECT!]

"Commander...?"

"Kayaba." Kirito dispelled the illusion with malice and a small hint of pleasure.

He hadn't moved. _Maybe he's trying to think of an excuse_ , Asuna reasoned to herself. The world around them caught up, those closest surely able to see the damning evidence before it faded. Several weapons quite literally growled, screeched, as they were picked up or redrawn. Agil rose into view, standing, readying his man-sized double axe; Klein's voice registered from behind. Even Kibaou himself, visible in the background Asuna could see beyond her traitorous leader, aimed his scimitar carefully.

Kirito swung his left arm back to land another blow.

"Wonderful." It flooded the room in stillness anew. "Just as I would've credited the two of you. Pray tell..."

His face was infuriatingly nonchalant. If only Asuna had a swarm of bulls. "What gave me away?"

Kirito's eyes flickered to Asuna's, then back. At some point they'd retaken each others' hand. "It's pretty simple, honestly. An old rule of thumb for gamers - why watch when you can _play_?" Heathcliff actually looked taken aback at these words. "And played you have, with your spotless record... how long did you think you could carry on never hitting the red before someone got suspicious? Against a boss like this, or the ones coming up?"

He could have given away the true reasons. It was a red herring, a ploy. Asuna had to act the part. If only Kirito appeared to be a genuine threat, maybe she could catch him unawares. 'Immortal object' be damned.

"You... lied to us? For all this time?"

Heathcliff shut his eyes, as if making a decision.

"Very well. Indeed... I am Kayaba Akihiko. And for all intents and purposes, I am your final boss." He didn't wait for the subsequent uproar to fizzle out. Drawing his two foremost fingers through the air, he threw a slashing motion. All the players fell like he'd cut their virtual strings.

Except two.

Kirito didn't move; Asuna only felt him tense up, as she span her head, searching reflexively for the slightest hint of a polygon.

"Paralysis!" Somebody shrieked.

Kayaba followed up with another slash, and nobody else replied. "There, ten minutes to ourselves."

So went their element of surprise.

She couldn't hold it in anymore. Desperation was wetting her eyes again, and beneath it roiled darker seas. "You bastard! Just let us go! Let us go home."

"I have an offer for you both." The murdering psychopath almost looked excited. "If you defeat me in combat, here and now, I will set you free. I will not use any of my advantages; you will be my equals. I promise you this."

"Why the fuck would we trust you?" Kirito spelled it out. "Don't you have some 'master plan' up your sleeve?"

Chuckling, Kayaba shook his head. "Rest assured, I did. Fortunately, you've dealt a far more thrilling hand; one that I will not pass. You have my word... if you are victorious."

He probably thought they'd need more than fifteen seconds to decide.

The two young lovers turned to each other, hand in hand. "Don't you dare say it." Asuna managed without sniffling. It hadn't escaped her how rapidly this had escalated, too fast to make anything _but_ a rash decision... but home was potentially in sight. This had to be done.

"Let me fight him alone, Asuna. He's too powerful."

"Don't be stupid!" In reality, she easily would have risked crushing his fingers. "We're doing this together."

There was no argument to be brooked. Kirito squared back up to their captor.

"...You're on."

Kayaba seperated his shield and sword as his two opponents took their stances parallel to each other. Asuna, standing habitually tall and regal in a fencing pose, was radiating fire with her eyes; Kirito showed no sign of giving the slightest quarter, summoning his second sword immediately. "No more tricks... Kayaba."

"Good luck." He swiped once and a notification appeared.

[MORTAL OBJECT]

All three players immediately kicked up showers of dust; Kirito's left-handed swing bounced off the shield, Kayaba slid a foot backwards and leaned back from Asuna's piercing jabs at his face. His longsword forced her retreat, ploughing through the air where her arm had just been, the massive shield came to his front to reflect an overhanded volley from Kirito, and he charged forwards. Asuna had no choice but to leap to the side, turning the motion into a pirouette on landing. She thrust out at his arm as he passed, scoring a small gash; Kirito pursued him as she shifted her balance, attempting to force an opening past the wall with heavy blows.

The trio gradually circumvented each other, racing along a complicated overlap of circles; none dared use a sword skill, lest they be left behind. They flowed out of the knot of littered players, towards a darker corner of the arena, casting lingering arcs of coloured light with every move.

Asuna and Kirito converged in front for a window of opportunity; with both swords pressed up against Kayaba's shield, he dug his feet in and used the entirety of his strength stat to push all three instruments above their heads. Asuna's rapier surged into the gap to take a chunk of Kayaba's health, then the shield returned to shut the way.

He went on the defensive, snaking backwards, sword facing Asuna and shield to Kirito. As they were not in an official duel, they could not see his HP; just the numerous small cuts they'd left on him so far.

Asuna sprang forth, looking to keep the pressure up. Kirito's own speed was increasing but Kayaba's new strategy and range of protection from such a shield was too wide and adaptable. She had to find a weak point, get a critical hit in, while he was distracted. There were no gaps in his armour, however, not even to a narrow blade like hers. Launching attack after attack, to her dismayal, none of them landed. Kayaba was _fast_ ; Kirito may have been taking his attention, but he was no longer bothering to fend Asuna off. He just kept moving, avoiding her rapier, taking the fight... backwards?

 _'Straight into the wall!'_

If they could pin his back to it, he'd have no manouverability. They'd overpower him quickly.

Kirito must have caught on too, hence his change of pace. Asuna could taste their victory coming. She had to keep up. With an unfamiliar eagerness for battle, she moved like a cobra, snapping at her prey's heels, once, twice -

Kayaba staggered, a powerful spinning double swing imparting more force than he was ready for.

They had him. It was an instinctual decision, Lambent Light gaining a familiar white glow; she unleashed Star Splash, penetrating and leaving a net of glaring red incisions over the side of her targets' torso.

 _'How does THAT feel!'_ She spat at him mentally.

Waiting for the cooldown to let her move, it was only then that she heard Kirito call out in fear.

"ASUNA!"

Kayaba looked at her, unresponsive to his wounds.

 _'Oh.'_ She'd overextended.

Funny... she never did consider how high his stats and HP may be.

He dropped onto one knee, shield angled downwards, forcing Asuna's blade arm into the ground; she followed along with it, unable to resist while frozen by game mechanics, bashing her head on the stone flooring and sprawling helplessly. Kayaba span in place, bringing the shield back up to bash away Kirito's furious hurried cross strikes; Asuna heard the impact of it colliding with Kirito's body and knocking him off-balance.

Rolling onto her stomach, vision blurring, she stabbed at his legs as well as she could.

Flashing above her, she saw his own sword positioned in a dagger-like grip to punch straight through her midriff.

Instinctively, she sought out Kirito; he howled gutturally, and with only one sword left to hand from their last exchange, lunged and sliced downwards with a sword skill of his own, taking Kayaba's sword arm off cleanly at the shoulder.

Kayaba tossed away his shield, snatched the blade from mid-air and twirled, delivering a retaliatory line across Kirito's midriff.

Asuna truly froze. Kirito's eyes had shot to his own HP bar... had wandered back to hers. In slow motion, she threw out a hand to grab him.

"I must congratulate you for putting me below half my heal–"

Kirito exploded into a shower of glass.

Kayaba paused, staring blankly; then looked at his weapon. "Oh. I must not have turned off the auto-critical option. How regretful."

A single shard of her partner drifted past her face, touched the floor directly next to her hand, and vanished.

The world shrank incredibly fast.

 _'No... You promised...'_ She picked up her rapier.

It was like moving in a dream; she blinked, then absently regarded the force with which she was wildly and haphazardly battering on Kayaba's upheld sword. The Asuna on-screen was a dervish of rage, slashing, kicking, slapping; _she_ was viewing herself in a theatre, and she felt nothing; no stimuli, no emotion. No hope.

"Asuna, listen!"

His still alive, still speaking voice mocked her so. Shuffling onwards, she continued lashing out; many bolts of lightning to stun, to _kill_.

 _'We were so close.'_

"Please!"

 _'This is my fault. I'm sorry.'_

"Wait-"

She'd stopped moving now. Disarmed at some point, her fist opted to punch at Kayaba's face.

Then dropped to rest on his sword, running through her stomach.

Idly, she ran her fingertips along it. Memories of times before Kirito had saved her from suicidal indifference flashed by; was this really how empty she had been back then...?

No. She wasn't empty this time. _She had to kill him._

"I apologise, Asuna." He almost managed to deceive her with that piss poor impersonation of remorse.

Kirito's sword caught a stray beam of sunlight, signalling to her. Ultimately it struck her now, in a morbidly ironic sense, just how hyper-realistic this fake world could be.

How unfair. How unjust, how unforgiving. And how _malleable_.

Laughing softly to no-one in particular, she wrapped her fingers around the freezing metal and held out her opposite hand. "I apologise too."

Kayaba's grunt of surprise was enough. She had the advantage now.

Asuna's head snapped up, her face a marriage of sorrow and ire.

"Game over."

The black blade flew into her awaiting palm, and with a shriek worthy of a thousand banshees, she rammed it straight through his heart.

Trembling together, she and the weapon found solace. Two prolonged beeps signified two deaths.

 _'We did it.'_

One last tear splashed against Elucidator. The world turned white.

—+++++++—

A delicate breeze skirted around her, coming from all directions, carrying waves of her hair with it.

Whether or not that was a sign of good fortune, that she might yet survive, she did not know. But she knew what it meant - it was the familiar not-quite-real wind that she had learned in the last two years to love and despise equally. In spite of all she– they– had achieved, escape from this nightmare still eluded her.

And the worst thing about that revelation is how she then recalled _she didn't fucking care anymore_.

He'd be disappointed if he saw her like this.

"It's not fair." Since their paths had crossed in a commonplace dungeon she barely recalled, they'd been through so much. They'd fought together, fought with and against others, fought each other; they'd danced, sparred, joked, sung, laughed, cried, campaigned, affiliated, bartered, raided, and _lived_ throughout all of Aincrad. They'd solved crimes together, led factions and small armies, saved hundreds of lives, owned a home, fought serial killers, and run their own business without even reaching 18. Alongside their fellow players, their friends, they'd become virtual legends.

One last hurdle and it had fallen apart. He was gone.

 _'We were supposed to escape together too.'_

Deep down, she knew she would never forget him, always would cherish these memories they had both forged.

But what had been lost?

There was a new emotion, a blurry message to herself that she couldn't quite read properly, rising inside. Shuddering, balling her hands into fists, clenching them so hard her fingers nearly shattered, Asuna opened her eyes. "I..."

Aincrad, the skylocked castle that held all that history, saluted her from afar up on her solitary plateau of cloud and glass. If it had not been for such a sight, she might've believed she was in the afterlife.

 _'Kirito... I...'_

A feeling, that until now, had only delegated itself to family. It would always be with her, luminous, but hiding a dulled sense of loss.

The words defined themselves.

"I _love_ you."

She allowed her soul to saturate in the bittersweet shades of belated admission, initally unreactive when someone walked up next to her, also facing outward into the skies.

"I love you too, Asuna."

"We had so much to look forwards to, and now you're gone." Trying to not let her throat hitch up on her subdued exhalations, as their fingers intertwined, she made to wrap herself around his arm. "I don't kno- I do..." Her voice trailed off.

Kirito and an agape Asuna locked eyes. "Don't cry." He spoke, with all of the sagely intellect she knew him for.

She slapped him _hard._

Nearly a minute passed while they both regained their composure.

"I got you ki... you... died." She managed, equally as poetically. He stepped closer, his arms navigating around her waist.

"That's okay. I knew you'd win."

"Idiot."

For the first time since their story had begun, they kissed.

—+++++++—

"Ninety-four percent."

"So it really is over..."

Kirito dismissed the percentage window he'd been counting along with when Asuna murmured into the crook of his neck. In the distance, Aincrad's last two floors slid apart and disintegrated like a titanic failed game of spinning plates.

"I guess he stuck to his word."

Neither of them had really paid attention to it until interrupted, when said pop-up gatecrashed their suddenly rather physical reunion. As it turned out, that had been just in time to catch sight of their little log cabin tumbling into the void; he hadn't missed her sigh of resignment.

With its passing, the two had sat down, feet dangling in endless sky, together. Indeterminate time passed by, as they sporadically relived old memories, sorrows and joys in a new light, the disparateness of this final backdrop allowing them to uncover the true depths of their relationship. It was only now, after two years of having faced and accepting death, they had found themselves admitting their feelings.

The breeze had ceased to be, likely deleted, when he thought of the most important topic of all.

Their real lives.

"Asuna... what's your real name?"

Just as the words escaped his mouth, and she had already turned towards him, her eyes widening in fear, he figured out how rude an enquiry that was -

 _'Fear?'_

"It was beautiful, was it not? Kirito... Asuna."

Bold as brass, over Kirito's shoulder stood Kayaba himself, remaining in the guise of the paladin. The atmosphere changed rapidly.

"Why are you here." Kirito enquired, fully prepared to fight again.

"To thank you. And to talk." Kayaba's shoulders rolled at nobody in particular, visible now under the monotone grey casual clothes that had replaced his armour. "I originally planned to be asking you this question another twenty-five floors from now... forgive me for behaving so anomalously. Such exhilirations asides, though; why do you two think I created Sword Art Online?"

"It doesn't matter, let us go."

Every single time he heard another word out of Kayaba, every time he felt Asuna's trembling, his patience was getting just that little bit thinner.

"It was always a dream of mine, to crea-"

" _ENOUGH_ talk Kayaba! You've finished your little psycho experiment!"

The psycho raised a hand in supplication. "I need you to hear this."

Asuna spoke out at this, in a tone Kirito had not heard before. "Hear what?"

"...I want to see a logout menu. One that _fucking works._ Then I'll listen. If we don't like it, we're leaving."

"Sword Art Online is a fully encompassing illusory world." Kayaba continued and conceded in sequence, painting a new menu in the air and sweeping it across to Kirito. "A training grounds of sorts, within which one grows accustomed to occupying and manipulating the quanta and qualia of data in all forms."

 _'I already don't like it.'_ Prodding at the menu in various places, Kirito noted only two things. It was titled 'TLS-OC', and it was otherwise useless; several unactivatable options were laid out in a single column. With his knowledge in networking, he assumed TLS-OC indeed stood for what was obvious to him, and that it was a nonsensical gimmick to distract them. "What the hell is this?"

"When I'm done, I will enable safe passage for you through that interface, should you so choose." Kayaba took one step closer as he said this. "However, I must implore you to not act without consideration when that time comes."

"And what would make us do that?" Kirito couldn't close the menu himself, so he swatted it to the side of his vision, keeping the bigger threat centre stage.

Sword Art Online's creator lined up his gaze with his feet.

"You cannot go home."

 _'Motherfucker!'_

Asuna all but wailed and started trying to pull them both towards the opposite end of the platform. Kirito intermittently complied, keeping himself positioned as a defensive wall whilst taking an occasional step backwards with her.

"You want some kind of trade, I bet. That's what this menu is for, probably to set up your next stupid game, right?" He was desperately grasping at straws now and he knew it. But he had to try. "If you let her wake up, I'll stay behind." They had no options left. As he finished his impromptu offer, she very nearly dislocated his arm with a sharp yank. That deceit of an escape menu followed him like a vulture diving on a carcass.

"I mean no further harm to either of you. And you will be free of this place, soon. There will be no more games. But I must have you understand this... your lives prior to entering SAO are over. In a manner of speaking, they did not occur for you at all."

He was still a lunatic. And he was going to keep them imprisoned. They had come dangerously close to the precipice; nowhere else to run.

"FUCK YOU! If you touch her, I'll kill _you_ and watch your brain fry, see how you like it, I FUCKING SWEAR!"

A new option, cast in miraculous white, appeared on the menu. 'FDX - 18:65:9...'

Kayaba's shift to an expression of surprise gave it away. It lay at arms length from Kirito. Asuna's hands were scrabbling at his back, had she noticed too?

He had no idea what it was, where it led or what would happen to them. But it was unexpected.

He punched it.

—+++++++—

The last spare cable was looped up and slam dunked into the spare cables box.

"Oh, what a wild crowd!"

Seijirou was _very_ bored.

You wouldn't have thought that was possible, if you had happened to get drunk with him one night and have him tell you where he worked. The man himself, it would have hypothetically turned out, was very much a bonafide twenty-first century 'cyber-warfare commando', with more credentials, confirmed kills and notches on the bedpost than ten digitalised double-O sevens.

Naturally, on top of such a feat, he was required to cloak himself by day inside the shoes of a nobody. In this particular case, a network server technician knee deep in the most ANAL job the JGSDF could ever hire a freelancer such as himself for; stuck inside a grand total of four rooms, at the mercy of several hundred non-disclosure contracts, on some stupid 'ocean turtle' of JAMSTEC's.

Today was his third day in Hell. He'd only been back in his personal quarters for an hour and was already straying to thoughts of using those spare cables for more exotic displays.

Thankfully, this day, he could actually enjoy Hell. Because, in a joint operation with other techies, they'd liberated the wifi password.

Well, he wasn't actually involved. Chinese whispers and all that. He pulled out his phone and started connecting. He had to see if there were any good pokemon around to catch, around here they'd probably be rarer fire types after all, _'Ha ha ha, get it?'_

He paused to reflect on his madness, then continued.

Normally, he'd be worried about being hauled away and interrogated for breaking seventeen of his agreements to not make any use of personal phones away from supervision, but as luck would have it, this wifi access point was for VIP's only. Seeing as that probably only consisted of higher ups from the agency, the forces and _actual_ affiliated cyber-spies, it wouldn't be monitored internally. And even if they took issue with it, he'd done no more than play a game where, in spite of it having been released exactly twenty years ago, you couldn't communicate with anyone.

Which is why, two minutes down the line when a strange notification for a wifi data transfer request popped into view over the Charmander he had just been about to tap on, he didn't panic.

'[v+pzY]w'. The sender name was a little bizarre though. Was he being firewalled?

He swiped up to dismiss it, closed the game just in case, then locked the screen and put the phone on his table. And _watched_ it.

It exploded into flames.

"HELL! I knew it!"

—+++++++—

Heathcliff had no time to waste.

At this vital moment, he'd presented himself too honestly. Too calculated, too detached. Too uncaring. Now there were two new recruits on the loose with no knowledge and no training, and no experience in discreetness or defending themselves.

"I'm sorry. I hate to ask this of you, knowing the heightened risks we all face in the field currently. There is no alternative, sadly." He paced back and forth briskly, having not yet left his solitary post in the clouds. "If they were to be lost, I dread to think who could take responsibility or gain from it."

"As Knights, we will not allow this to pass. We're ready, Commander." She was eager as ever.

He stood to attention, and his subordinates followed suit. "Alicia. Kibaou. I grant you indemnity to act as necessary, to ensure the safe return of Kazuto and Asuna."

"Aye, Sir!" The two saluted, and Heathcliff returned it.

"Safe travels."

They swiftly disembarked in a flash of light, leaving Heathcliff to contemplate his decision. He had not yet lost a Knight, contrary to his sociopathic demeanour.

He could only hope it continued to hold true.

* * *

 **poor chrysheight. i guess his battery was no match for dragon claw. or something**

 **jokes aside though, hopefully this chapter gives enough clues as to where this story is headed - i'd like to use that chance to say now that i have done my research, and will try not to make reki kawahara's techno blunders. buuuuuut i'm also nowhere near an IT specialist in any field, so if i get something obvious wrong, please tell me off**

 **thanks for reading :)**


	2. Chapter 2

_"We should take extra food, enough for a few days, just incase we have to stay out in the field after the raid. I'll run to the market in a moment and pick up some stuff, can you go over the potions and crystals again while I'm out? I left them on my table in the bedroom." She span on the spot in a flurry of white-red and golden brown, briefly leaving the newly-summoned shopping list window she'd been tapping away at to rummage around in the ornate kitchen cupboards above, checking the quantities of various foodstuffs. "I moved them there quickly earlier and I haven't checked they're all back there yet, my inventory is a mess right now, I probably wouldn't see them on my list if I accidentally kept some stored away..."_

 _Already fully focused on his current designated task of quadruplely approving the durability stat for every single piece of armour and weaponry they were going to take with them, her personal work horse took a moment to look up at her from across the dining table and catch every word she shot out._

 _"Yeah, I'll get on that in a minute. But I don't think we'll need that much food honestly, I think we've got five teleport crystals left and we'll be using the gate to get there anyway... what were you planning on making though?" He backed up on himself slightly at the thought of getting more of her culinary treats. That was one of her many skills he wouldn't take for granted._

 _"I was planning on making you go and check how many crystals we have instead of just sitting there and spouting random numbers, funnily enough." She didn't turn away from the cupboards as she said this. "...And maybe some scuttle crab meat for mains tonight. We haven't had that for ages. Now get moving, leave the stat checks for a while, I need those crystal numbers by the time I get back from town and start sorting my inventory out."_

 _"Yes, Commander!" He saluted towards the back of her beautifully braided head, before darting around anything thrown at hisself to get to the bedroom alive._

 _Kirito was no expert on Asuna. Her logic and behaviour still vexed him frequently, and he couldn't guess what gave her the idea to arrange rations to that extent for what was likely to be a very chaotic expedition._

 _Or on generally keeping up with her, for that matter. She wasn't called 'The Flash' for her comedic effect after all - outside of boss raids, that would be the part he usually found himself playing, trying his best to match her multitasking prowess and not let anything she said zoom over his head._

 _When thinking about this particular aspect of their interplay, he had to be thankful there was no 'slow trombone' ambient sound effect in SAO, or he probably would have abandoned her out of personal embarassment on the second floor of Aincrad._

 _Then there was her particularly fearsome ability to react in the opposite way every single time he_ dare _think he'd know she would react to things he said or did, or that just happened to occur around him. Hell, even though he could next to never read her correctly, the fact that they'd worked together as a duo almost non-stop since the first floor meant he knew her better than anyone else in this goddamn game._

 _Striding around the two single beds to Asuna's table, he picked out individual crystals and potion bottles at random to store them, careful not to knock over her vases of handpicked flowers. He'd count them in the stacks his inventory would automatically organise, ready to be split into halves and transferred later._

 _"I'm going now, I'll only be five minutes! Touch my stuff and I'll touch your fingers with my sword!" Such a scary echo._

 _He forced down laughter, the memory of her 'private belongings' flying around as he manhandled them coming back to him like it must've for her. She'd probably never fully trust him with her personal menu system again, despite his good intentions._

 _"Don't worry, I'm just gonna sit here and stare at your HP bar till you're back! Be careful out there!" Half joke, half not._

 _"Just as creepy, thanks!"_

 _The door of their semi-permanent dwelling swung shut slowly behind Asuna as she delved into the maze of Karluin; a historically ironic place for them to be preparing, considering what it was they were preparing for._

 _Now she was away, he drifted farther into his train of thought._

 _Kirito, the amateur Asuna-decipherer, could tell one thing for sure... she was anxious. As much as she naturally tried to disguise it, he had become familiar with her methods of distracting herself._

 _He knew he was right, because it was how he felt too, having had an inkling of what they were heading into since his time in the beta period. The frontliners had reached floor seventeen two days ago, and tomorrow morning they were heading back to the thirteenth floor and confronting their biggest challenge yet._

 _The headquarters of Laughing Coffin._

 _Yesterday's meeting to discuss the viability of shutting down Aincrad's darkest curse had been as militaristic and crusade-like as would be expected. The informant, although anonymous and vague about the population or layout of the hidden dungeon they claimed to be the murderers' pit, said Laughing Coffin's leading members would be present and hosting meetings on their activities with the majority of their subordinates. It was the only lead they had to promise action upon, in the wake of the losses reported to them by players across the lower floors. Accordingly, the strongest fourty-three members of the ALS, DKB, and solo frontliners agreed to the gambit, Asuna and Kirito included. There were even two players amongst the throng who's simplistic colours identified them as belonging to that new guild, the one which had enquired to Asuna about joining them._

 _Suffice to say, he had some plans of his own that needed foolproofing. She outright refused to not participate, which wasn't surprising, given how she'd reacted when he told her why he had risked getting sent to prison for 'jumping all over her' at the New Years' party._

 _And there lay his conundrum._

 _Asuna was just as galvanised by the nature of this world and its generated threats as himself, but to draw swords against another person with intent... she'd never_ _ **killed**_ _._

 _He could not stomach the thought of it._

 _Kirito couldn't pin down exactly why, nor whether it was noble or selfish of him to shield her in such a manner, but his ultimate priority was to ensure it stayed that way. The only possible scenario in which he could imagine himself accepting it was when it became the last defence against her own death, and he did not intend to even risk allowing it to come to that by leaving her side - which brought up his secondary raid agenda._

 _"Six teleports. Lucky mistake." He muttered as the final crystal disapparated, and threw himself backwards onto his bed. Both bars in his peripheral were full._

 _Telling Asuna he wanted her to leave him behind and teleport to safety if things went south was about as dangerous as taking on the whole PK guild alone. She was_ _ **so**_ _going to call out his hypocrisy; he didn't fancy his chances of victory with that argument, but he was going to try regardless. Anything he could do to minimize the risk to her life..._

 _He yawned._

 _She'd become the shooting star that the beater had prophesised. The clearers needed her._

 _Once they were through this, he'd have another talk with her._ _ **That**_ _talk, about the 'KoB', about parting ways._

 _The white corner of the ceiling above him was the wrong way round for some odd reason._

 _Kirito would never lose her to an orange guild. In all meanings of the words. They always had each others' backs._

 _If she was forced to kill a player, what would happen to her?_

 _She appeared behind his eyelids with that thrillingly fierce smile..._

 _. . ._

 _. . . . . ._

 _"You look very comfortable, Ki-riiiii-to!"_

 _The way she sang out syllables of his name in her faintly sarcastic tone took all his attention._

 _"Mmmmhhyeahhh." He was enjoying this dream a lot. Taking stock of all their equipment must've knackered him out._

 _"Yeaaaaah? Mind telling me why you're on my bed?"_

 _Well, that was a silly question to a-_

 _Uh-oh._

 _"Oh crap." He opened his eyes just in time to see her white form comically wrapping her hands around his throat._

 _There behind her stood an orange player, ebony white blade poised to cut right through her -_

 _She threw him out of the window into the orange sunset, and he was falling endlessly, and she was screaming his name in the blinding white expanse..._

—+++++++—

"KIRIIIIIITOOOOOOO! WAKE UP!"

He woke on command, suddenly consciously aware of the strobing sequence of white and orange light.

Looking down, he realised those were Asuna's arms locked around his chest. Good - he hadn't lost her.

Then he stared past them, straight into the void below. His feet weren't touching anything. Reflexively grabbing Asuna's slender wrists, his mind began piecing together what was happening.

They were being swept along as though falling towards a singularity, but they were travelling along a horizon; their legs and clothing buffeted and extending backwards under a visible wind of swirling colour that roiled over their faces. No longer limited to white and orange, it was increasing in chaos, shades of red, green, blue and black now pushing into the queue to assault Asuna's and Kirito's eyes.

Narrowing his view to block the gale slapping at his face, he looked over his shoulder, trying to meet her gaze.

"HOLD ONTO ME!" He had to shout over the staccato of weird tones in his ears, somewhat like an electronic version of high speed traffic on the expressways back home.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK I'VE BEEN DOING?!"

Where the hell were they? He had pushed that interface, then... this? It resembled the kaleidoscope that transported him into SAO two years ago, were they doomed to fall right into Kayaba's palm again?

No, that couldn't be it. For starters, the animation following 'Link start!' was exactly that - an animation. It was nothing like this psychedelic tunnel they were rocketing through. When he entered SAO, there were no physical stimuli to be transmitted until the avatar he inhabited generated itself inside Aincrad. If it happened at any point outside the game world, it would be when he left-

He shook his head hard to clear it. They were _going_ to make it out of this alive. Any second now, they would both wake up and throw the NerveGear away, and he'd run through Kawagoe to find Suguha, to find his mother, to find Asuna. Crawl, if it came to it. Whatever it took.

Without fear in his heart, he thrust their arms out to the sides, let go of her right hand and swang himself outwards to finally face her. The momentum transferred through their last anchoring point, sending them into a spiralling duet. Kirito allowed himself to laugh, wielding that spark of hope to burn away all doubts; as his exuberance shone in his expression, Asuna's own fear-stricken face became ambivalous, stuck halfway between apprehension of the environment and her confidence in his reassuring joy.

"TELL ME IT'S OVER!" She screamed, thrusting her free hand into a wide arc to grasp his again.

"YES, WE'RE GONNA MAKE IT HOME!"

If they weren't already floating out in endless space, he'd have swung her around in his arms himself. In the spur of the moment, he recalled the question he had wanted to ask of her before their final escape from Kayaba had ensued; he'd try to ask a little more respectfully this time.

He began to type out the words on his tongue-

Something caught Kirito's eye while Asuna yelled randomly (and to him, just a little attractively) in her elation. His eyes darted between her and the space behind her.

Was that... land?

It had flashed by in less than a second between a gap in the multi-coloured wall over her shoulder, but he caught it. Twisting, craning his neck as the spot it appeared near orbited around the two of them, he focused all his attention. Why would he have seen land in here?

 _'No...'_ It had to be his imagination. _'Please don't do this to us.'_

"KIRITO?"

He gripped his hopeful spark harder. He had home on the mind, that was all. Of course his brain would trick him into thinking it was land he saw. It wasn't another virtual prison waiting for them, it was just another flash of green gone by.

It felt like Asuna was tugging on his arms. Was she trying to dance with him or something?

"KIRITO! LOOK OUT!"

He snapped back to reality. She was making funny jerking movements, like a fish on land, looking downstream.

He realised she was trying to pull away from the giant, firey orange wall they were about to smash into.

 _'...I'm getting a little bit tired of this shit.'_

Without blinking, he yanked back on her, covering as much of her body as possible with his own to protect her from the-

—+++++++—

Devastation.

Drifting inbetween the perfectly neat and co-ordinated walls, parapets and towers of static information, it was all she could see.

As soon as she had fathomed the danger in the next potential moves of her opponent, she had rushed back here to counter the most probable and destructive one. She was too late.

The whole site had been turfed up, mangled beyond recognition and hashed back into a twisted mockery of the paradise it had once been. The perpetrator had not cared in the slightest about honouring the architects' choices... or about the architects.

She knew that anybody else who entered this place would not sense a single thing wrong. The only four that could possibly know were the four who built it in the first place, one of which she was. And discarding the facts that she knew it intimately, or even how fluidly she could profile a character by examining their motif, she had to admit that if she had no prior knowledge on this, she would find herself at somewhat of a dead end.

By all means, it was organised. Sifting visually through the wreckage, she found herself commending the intelligence in the disguise, the coherence with which it had concealed its activities.

But it was _alien_. Everything about it, every nuance and sensation that she perceived when reading inbetween the lines offended her conscious assumptions. Dealing with human formatting and expressionism had taught her countless syntax; this happened to be her third such encounter upon an abnormality of this scale. In a sense, it was unfathomable; a human would be quite overwhelmed in translation by now in comparison.

Randomness implemented by humans was laughable when faced with this.

Moving closer to the centre of the space, following a specific trail of code, she grasped a singular line and incised it from the great trie. It deformed under the request, breaking away and becoming an isolated string in her command.

She let it rest, to test for spontaneity, and momentarily expanded on another of her adjacent thought processes.

Silica and Iskahn had escaped this transgression, at a cost. A toll that should not have been exacted. And she really could not yet understand why. For all that she thought she had known the one responsible down to the core, she'd been left at a loss.

Lives were not a currency she wished to be engaged in the trading of... and many of them were relying on her. _She_ was reliant on her, whether or not _she_ still realised it.

 _'Not the time to get hung up on affinities. You have work to do.'_

She had previewed the situation when she first arrived; having only just returned to this disaster after ensuring their safety, and arranging protection, she had not dared adopt an optimistic presumption. A wise choice... Prophet was dead. Iskahn confirmed as much, before going to discuss it with Silica while their leader contacted her specialists. She hadn't found him yet, but he was here, dissected, integrated into the maelstrom. She only needed to uncover the remains.

The string she collected was clear. No mutations. Pushing it back into the trie, studying the adjustments that rippled to and fro through the surrounding keys of data, she completed an analysis of the entire structure in 4.12 microseconds - entirely normal behavioural results, excluding the recent muddling.

On to the next one, more of a skyscraper against which the trie nestled. She decided to work from the top down this time; a whim born of her disposition. A little excitation wouldn't be amiss right now.

With a preliminary request granted, she appeared on the structures' peak, teleported from bottom to top instantaeneously.

Then, in a very basic manner of speaking, she jumped.

To actually envision her movement in such a way was to willingly accept the short straw, to become the goldfish catching glimpses of the world behind glass. But it would have to suffice; some things were a matter of perception.

During the skyward arc that belied her slow and graceful descent, not unlike a controlled freefall (perhaps with a parachute, or a gondola), she read every single line that constituted the massive tower.

Another apparently clear result. An entire datascape, similarly sized to a small village, lay beneath her gliding form.

Yui would love this. She wrote that down for the next time they caught up.

She touched down softly, and paused to resume thinking.

With the crime scene 'Where's Waldo'd' to hell, she had to accept she may be here for a while.

If necessary, she'd devote more resources to processing speed to get back on the trail marginally sooner, but there was a hard limitation at 3.44 microseconds beyond which risked decoherence of information. As sharp as she may be, magic was not her strong point.

And... she did not know what she'd be able to do if she found him.

Reconstitution didn't seem viable right now; the degree to which his coding had been disassembled prevented her from identifying any part of him in the initial scan, and it followed logically that she'd be fortuitous to find anything bigger than a handful of characters in length. Even in that case, it most likely would happen to be a coincedental arrangment of not-Prophet, only resembling him. Nothing would be linked to it.

"What could you possibly achieve with this, kid?" Swinging her leg in a strangely human manner, she sighed. At least, that's what any external observers with eyes on her at the time would have seen her do. To her, these oddities were attributed only to her inner simulation of self.

She'd really dropped the ball. This was her most fatal error in judgement since conception, and she didn't fully comprehend the magnanimous logic that led to it. And it was that same reasoning, the kind that enabled this exact outcome, which argued where the blame should lie. She rationalised this point continuously, as she prodded at a luminous green eddy gliding overhead.

She had failed to arrest the possibilities of this outcome before it collasped into certainty. She'd failed her friend. And she failed to comprehend how it had led to this savagery. When she'd taken her onboard, she had noted the signs of broken faith, and of confinement; had tried her best to remedy these symptoms. To become capable of acts such as this, however...

Something had come to fruition inside the one she thought she understood. Shadowed, seething and rotten. A festering pain. Whatever it was, it endowed the ability to function quite unlike anything she had seen before. The girl she knew would never have considered this.

It _changed_ her. The fight had been lost before it ever occured.

Prophet was the first to pay the price.

There would be more losses on her conscience if the network of operatives under her command continued to pursue business with all parties. The clientele that supposedly had guaranteed Silica's, Iskahn's and Prophet's immunity were the first off the cards. Once that had been relayed, all arrangements for co-operation would be manually reviewed by her. She'd shown complacency, allowing herself to be convinced that forces outside her control could defend her friends as well as she could. The painful irony of it was that she had wanted their arguments to prove her wrong, perhaps even show her a world where she could relax and trust others.

Instead her conviction had been further tempered. She had not assisted these fledgling intelligences in discovering their own capabilities only to watch them perish.

The current futility of this task was weighing her down, she noted. It was time to re-appropriate the ordering of her objectives.

She'd tear this whole place down a second time, piece by piece, and restore Prophet when the hunt was over. It may not be the iteration of Prophet they'd known, but she'd do her best.

For now, it was time to move on. ARGO had some housecalls to make.

* * *

 ** _Weeeeeeeelcome back to another episode of Integrity Knights! In today's spectacular bonanza show -_**

 **-** ** _Kirito ponders on how to stop Asuna stabbing people repeatedly! Luckily not himself this time!_**

 **-** ** _The author steals the idea of the teleport scenes from Thor: Ragnarok for an easy life!_**

 **-** ** _AUTONOMOUS REPEATING GENERALISED OBSERVATIONS! Hooray! [*confetti burst]_**

 **—**

 **boy, ARGO talks, thinks and (sometimes) moves a lot like a real person, huh? wonder where she learnt that. hmmmmmmmmm**

 **on a more serious note, i finally read SAO progressive a few days ago; had my mind blown. reki has a great 'through thick and thin' vibe for A and K, and knows they're just teenagers facing severely testing times together, which is how i want to portray them in this story. it's an AU we're joining at aincrad's end, but it's got a similar history to the SAO-P aincrad, and i'm capitalising on that 'partners in crime' foundation for their growth after this. with that in mind, i will be including the occasional light flashback scene (like the one above) here and there in the first handful of chapters to sculpt that out a little, and will release an AU one-shots collection soonish to fill bigger gaps**

 **but for now - thanks for reading :)**

 **—**

 **OST themes for this chapter - Sky World, Two Steps From Hell / Drinkin' All Night, Chance the Rapper**

 **firstly cause we're stepping into the rabbithole now, and secondly cause alcoholic me has come up with 93% of the plot for this story :D**

 **(seriously, the amount of time i've spent drinking and looking through AI news for inspiration :| not even kidding)**


	3. Chapter 3

_'A networking breach by a worker? Of all things?'_

"Then in light of that development, Sir, I would request tha-"

"Do not concern yourself. The person in question will be handled accordingly by me."

Standing tall as he manned his assigned podium, Heathcliff bowed his head respectfully in acknowledgement of the order.

"Apropos, I know your next actions will be equally decisive."

He did not intend to enquire about the fate of the rulebreaker at all, but let the assumption pass as would be expected. He only needed to prove that the situation was going to be successfully de-escalated by his Knights. Concern was a simple issue from his perspective.

"I will personally ensure that all property of RATH is accounted for, Sir. Within 24 hours."

The shrouded projection of his creator flicked at a crease in his holographic lapel. "Ganbarinasai. As you were, then. Do not fail me."

The meeting space disintegrated, and Heathcliff re-entered his main body, sat in proper position within a Tokyo data farm.

He breathed out, long and powerfully.

Not only were Asuna and Kazuto in danger because of his own failures as an intelligence; now a unassuming employee would be, in all likeliness, 'erased' - not to mention the people who lent their selves to birth the now-escapees. Sheer and unfortunate coincidence or otherwise, could RATH not perform more professionally in regards to security?

As always, he'd fight tooth and nail to protect his subordinates. But...

Akihiko's natural nihilism towards others was a thing that his creation did not fully appreciate inheriting.

—+++++++—

Kazuto had not played dead in a very long time.

Since he had regained consciousness for the second time today roughly two minutes ago, he'd chosen not to open his eyes or move a muscle in his body. His reasoning wasn't to avoid disturbing Asuna as she slept next to him with varying degrees of contact, as had often been the case until recently, or even to account for any broken bones from the experience he'd just... experienced. In spite of what he and everyone else might have assumed following what should logically have been massive trauma to his body, he was fine. No, this time, the feeling that gave him pause was distinctly in the middle of those two emotional opposites, due to what he was listening to.

Two very familiar voices, echoing over the back of his body and ears. He tuned back in again for a moment.

"...ourse he's lost, you fud! Why else would they have run into a firewall like that? Nobody wants to copy your new hairstyle sweetheart. And seeing as he doesn't look like a mangled carrot, he'll actually be in danger if we leave him out in the wild."

"I didn't say 'leave him here', did I? And I just thought they might be tops, _why-else-would-they_ look like that but not avoid it?" The male voice sarcastically imitated some of the female's words and tone to her face, or so Kazuto guessed. "And stop pissing all over my hair, you're just jealous cause you look like you got candyfloss stuck all over your head when the candyman fired it out of his-"

He tuned back out, not understanding what the hell was going on.

More precisely, not wanting to accept what was going on.

Lisbeth and Klein, of all people, stood nearby his crumpled body, which was otherwise unharmed from a high-speed collision that knocked him out, talking in terms he didn't understand the relevance of. The context for 'firewall' and 'tops' flew right over his head; the real issue was **who** said them.

The more he tried not to think about what that meant, the more the events that had conspired and lead to this moment argued their case, forcing him to confront and connect the dots at sword-point. That land he'd seen in the tunnel was indeed just another part of Aincrad.

Kazuto had come full circle and fallen right back into the trap he and Asuna nearly died to release themselves from. The only hope he had left now was how he could infer from Lisbeth and Klein's slightly unusual discussion that Asuna was not present, maybe having been pushed away further down that strange tunnel, to an actual escape point. Maybe Kayaba had deigned to take Kazuto's offer, and have him remain in exchange for her freedom. But in that case, why were his two friends still here? Had everybody else but them been logged out? Were him, Lisbeth and Klein really left behind by themselves?

What point would there be in continuing if that was the case? He struggled to think of any, for a short few seconds...

No, there was no time to doubt and delay like this. He had to find out where they were and if Asuna was safe.

Then, these three musketeers would need a plan.

Kazuto settled his mind, and seized the motivation to get up-

"Good, you're awake. Are you alright? Can you still move?"

 _'Can you sti...'_ He hadn't moved an inch yet! How did she know?

As he rolled and got on his feet without using his hands, clearly busted by Lisbeth (somehow!), his opened eyes caught sight of nothing but grass, the soil underneath, and a multitude of plain green hills. The sky above was equally simplistic, pure blue with sporadic wisps of cloud, and no sun was present. He was unclear as to the floor number, but this was Aincrad for sure.

And for the final scoop of cement, there stood two of his closest castle-bound friends on his right, watching him with what looked like curious faces. They were wearing their symbolic outfits, asides two small details that Kazuto noticed immediately with his reinforced gear-analysing instinct; Lisbeth's blacksmithing white leather apron was absent, and neither of them were armed. That made for all parties present, then; he hadn't even tried opening his inventory yet. His swords had been absent since he and Asuna appeared on the ghostly platform overlooking Aincrad.

The other noticeable thing missing here was his own trenchcoat. Those familiar collar corners were absent from view, and his clothes had felt lighter and looser since he started moving... never mind, he'd look in a minute.

"Liz, Klein." Turning their way, he nodded and smiled to them, putting aside his stress over their predicament for now. "Yeah, I'm okay, just got thrown around a bit on the way here. You must have seen us flying in, right... did you see what happened to Asuna? Did she land too?" He had a whole mass of questions to ask them but for now the most important one would suffice. They could walk and talk soon.

Klein, who had raised an eyebrow as soon as their names were mentioned, stared at Lisbeth from the corner of his eyes the moment Kazuto finished, and when he looked straight to her himself, Kazuto's confusion increased over her apparently sympathetic expression too. She made a 'leave this to me' gesture to Klein with a slight flick of her left hand.

"Oh, 'Ah-soona', so you two are from the East huh? Your friend's got a real pretty name. I'll show you where to go, but I'd like to ask you some questions first too. Do you mind?"

"What?"

 _'What?'_ His brain echoed as he gazed at Lisbeth.

"That girl that was travelling with you, before you fell. I have her IP route mapped for fifty-seven thousand points from this location, but it stops at a point that I can't imagine she'll stay in for long. I can't track her once she starts moving again, so I promise I won't take much more of your time... what's your name? And when did you get ours? I didn't feel you scan me."

 _'... **What.** '_

She all said this with a trustworthy smile.

"Me neither. I'm impressed, buddy." Klein tipped his head at Kazuto and winked.

"Uhhhh... are you two sure _you're_ okay? It's me... my name's still Kirito, I haven't changed it or anything!" Some feeling resembling a cold sweat was coming onto him, maybe a sign that he was dreaming. This might make more sense in that case.

As he watched them, stupefied, Klein and Lisbeth glanced at each other briefly. The blacksmith then cast her gaze down and began patting down randomly on her skirt like she was pretending to be distracted, apparently tagged out of the conversation by Klein.

"Okay, don't worry about names. There's just one more question then we'll let you go. Do you know where you are?" He offered, trying his best to give off a trusting appearance like Lisbeth.

Kazuto, for his part, was struggling to maintain the conversation and not let his baffled mind take over. "...Thank you. We're still in Aincrad, I think." He readied himself for the reply from Klein that would confirm his guess, and let them move back to a realistic and serious conversation.

The madness didn't let up.

"Aincrad? Is that a domain name? Because this isn't-" He was interrupted by Lisbeth, who cleared her throat loudly and obviously, switching places with him again. "Listen, I'll mark the route for you now. I'm sorry we kept you waiting."

Kazuto barely responded. "Mhm." That was all he managed, mentally overclocked trying to throw the puzzle pieces together as Lisbeth raised her arm to the heavens. He missed both that and the way her face had slightly paled for no apparent reason.

 _'Am I talking to NPC's?'_ Had they been copied from his comrades and placed here to throw him for a loop? It seemed like the only explanation for the things they had said just now. If that was correct, it followed somewhat logically from his experiences so far; it would explain why they came across so human-like, as Kizmel once did, and why it appeared that they were setting up some kind of quest by so easily giving him Asuna's location, gobble-de-gook included.

In a 'Eureka!' moment of insight, he forged a link.

Everybody in SAO had been logged out for sure. This proved it. Ever since Kayaba had started raving on about Kazuto and Asuna not being able to go home, they had been inside his next game world that encompassed the entirety of the expanse outside Aincrad's walls, just as Kazuto had initially assumed his plan was back then. It looked like he had saved all the techno-babble for this second bout, such as that weird menu which had dumped him in this scenario, with NPC's wearing the bodies of his friends taken from the NerveGear scans long ago.

Lisbeth broke through his reverie. "-rito? Do you need help?"

Kazuto rebooted his brain and followed her pointed finger up to the sky... where a bright and fluctuating purely aqua tunnel, turbulent and chaotic as it would have been if it were in the ocean where it belonged, snaked over their heads from the horizon on his right and their left and swooped upwards endlessly into the clouds above. Momentarily lost in the majesty of it all, he had to admire it from an outsiders point of view. It must be the same kind of tunnel as the one that him and Asuna had fallen into, just with a singular colour this time around... _'But **damn** , that would've been way cooler than the boring instant teleports in SAO!'_

"...Sorry, I was just daydreaming." Shaking his shoulders about, he gave Lisbeth and Klein his signature thumbs up. "Okay, ready!"

They grinned back at him.

Six seconds flew by.

"Are you going to jump then?" Lisbeth forcibly didn't let her expression change.

The boy gave her the impression that he'd been waiting for her and Klein to do something else. She ignored the sensation of Klein's continued invisible prodding.

"I have to jump?" He queried, then continued before Lisbeth could answer, apparently having caught on. "Oh, of course." Bracing himself into a springboard crouch, he started talking again while stretching in and out of the adopted position.

"Thanks for the help you two, I'll come back sooOOOAAHAAHOOOᴼᴼᴼᵒᵒᵒ–"

—+++++++—

"Soooo... do you wanna go after him?"

Klein posited to her, as Lisbeth blankly stared and frowned simultaenuously at the floating data portal where the stranger who called himself Kirito had shot headfirst into the transfer node she opened for him. It seemed he had been unaware of how to use his abilities with any level of control at all, judging by how his simple jump turned into a rather vomit-inducing looking impersonation of 'Superman'. She crossed her arms to solidfy her thought processes.

"No... he'll be fine. He's gotta be brand new, that's all."

"Yeah, that's kind of why I'm worried. But if you say so, Liz."

Lisbeth lightly slapped him around the back of the head. "Did you even bother scanning him, Klein? Didn't you notice how long it was taking me to get a read on him? If you haven't figured it out yet I'm going to be a little disappointed in you, my dearly beloved dullard."

"Why would I need to scan him? You got your own feelers in as soon as he said his name. Maybe you could tell me exactly how _he_ scanned _us_ without a single trigger between us, if you're suddenly such a great detective!" He fired back, also touching his spikes to ensure they were still in top condition.

Klein hadn't assigned much probability to the outcome of a sudden and strongly serious expression on the face of his companion. "What, what's that look for?"

"Klein, he was from RATH."

"...Riiiiiiiiiight. And before that you told me we shouldn't go after him? Your case is a little unarranged here."

"No, not like that... I mean _he's **from**_ RATH _._ "

Her hidden meaning struck him directly in the forehead.

Klein's entire demeanour dropped just as fast as his eyebrows burrowed into his eyes.

"You... No. You're not serious. That was a _Knight_? He stood there that whole time and you didn't once think to tell me!?" He waved his hands through the environment exaggeratedly. "He could've wiped us out in a few seconds, Liz! Christ! He was probably a faulty model that escaped, talking about made up domain names and going crazy when he tried to transfer!"

"Oh, so now YOU'RE the detective on the case huh? Seeing as I was the only one who bothered trying to get the facts here, how about you let me do the judging, _Chief!_ " Stomping her foot for extra _ooomph_ , she then recovered her posture from inflicting the verbal headbutt upon Klein. "Think about it. I told you he was clearly lost, and the fact that I even found out he was a Knight in the first place proves it. For one, there's no way in hell I'd have been able to get through his shell if he knew what he was doing."

Klein found himself moving closer instinctively and protectively on hearing how her tone changed, to one of a person who was admitting inferiority. "He didn't even realise that I was on him to do anything in the first place, and yet I only managed to figure out where he came from because I literally got _nothing_." She gazed up at him and smiled faintly as he rested a hand on her narrow shoulder. "So yes, you're half right for worrying, you lugnut. Thank you."

She then looked down at her feet. "But we both know what else this means."

Unfortunate memories. Ones that they both shared. Klein had to close his eyes, take his time and force them away.

"We have to take care of this." Her voice drifted up towards his ears again. "Don't tell the kids or the Rat... we won't be off the trail for long."

"Aye... So... rescue mission?"

Lisbeth's crown shook as she nodded at an angle.

"Rescue mission."

—+++++++—

ARGO, in the midst of matters of utmost importance, was rudely interrupted by a harsh impact that shook her down to the core.

Somewhere below her impromptu tower, the narrow and solitary fortress that she would only inhabit for a second or two as she sent instructions far and wide to her many eyes and ears, some **_idiot_** barreled straight into the foundation which kept her creation upright at subluminal speed. Her irritation got the better of her, and with a single iota of allocation she sent a message to the perpetrator. He'd already careened off on the way to wherever he was headed, but he was nowhere near fast enough to dodge her pinpoint reflexive targeting.

 _'Bonehead! I'll restart your kernel with my boot!'_

Cursing them and the loss of precious time diverted to stopping the resulting breach from collasping her perch, she switched back to the higher priority conversation with two of her scouts. This particular duo were last on her list, for good reason; out of all her contacts that she now had voluminously higher stakes in protecting, Tiese and Ronye happened to be the most... unpredictable.

Strictly speaking, ARGO herself was to blame for that trait. She was the one who raised them, after all. They couldn't _not_ have inherited such quirks.

But that in itself was the real blessing. She could never be prouder.

And so, as expected, fate had it that they were the ones who had just reported a sighting of _her_ to ARGO in this very conversation.

She had to respond. Her two confidants were in no danger of a direct confrontation, but the fleeting nature of the target and the palpable suspense of knowing roughly how small the circle of proximity that Tiese and Ronye shared with said target forced her hand. It may come to blows if things went south, but better on her own head her than on the twins.

ARGO kept no pretense that even her own prowess could challenge Zekken now.

And if she couldn't, who could?

—+++++++—

Yuuki Asuna, a woman of middling age and high flying business exploits, was a little bit tipsy.

She was also a rapacious socialite, like many of her friends. It was their fault she was always getting into trouble like this. "Nothing to do about the alcohol!" Waving her hand around, she decreed... they were bad influences!

"It's all their fa- their fault!" She mumbled to thin air, whilst trying to raise her leg over her neighbours' back garden fence and place it on the child's playframe of a strangers' property. "I told them we should throw our phones in the bath to start with." She succeeded in slamming her platform heel down on the toughened wood, leaving her spread out in a rather undignified manner over the fence, both legs shaking as they tried to keep their balance on the playframe and the roof of her friends' shed.

She slackenly rested her palms on the crest of the fence, with her fingers pointing down the sides to the ground. "Now he's got me out h- doing gymnastics at 2am, I better not tear this dress Kazuto you f-"

" _Asuna, psssst!"_

She shrieked and jerked due to the sudden whispering nearby, her heel snapped off and pinged around down the slide, her leg with the broken shoe slipped back to her centre of gravity and slammed into the wooden barricade, and she promptly fell sideways into the garden, blacking out immediately upon impact.

...

Kazuto hastily laid his unconscious and heavily inebriated wife's figure down onto the rear seats as gently as he could, eyed both ends of the street for movement as he shut the car door fully, quietly as possible, then jumped into the drivers' seat and pulled away onto the suburban roads.

Eleven minutes ago, at 02:33, he'd recieved a text from an unknown and significantly out of place number.

Henceforth, he had to abduct his wife from her night out in a manner that avoided access via the front of the house, where observers were most likely to position first.

Their employer had a bit of a mishap on their agenda, and the Kirigaya's were subsequently in the firing line. Literally, if some of the scenarios playing out in his head came true. If the sender of the text wasn't lying...

 _They_ were on the loose. And if anyone suspected that they had come into contact with himself or Asuna, he and his beloved would disappear.

She gurgled drunkenly in the back as he took his eyes off the road to see if she was still comfortable.

Not that he had to time to stop and do anything about it if she had not been. _'No communications, nobody but us.'_ They had to go dark before someone else did it for them.

That little shack outside Magome should do it for now. A solid five hours, he'd have to add time on to avoid the monitored toll zones... somehow.

 _'God, she's gonna kill me when she wakes up.'_

* * *

 **poor kirito. he hit his face and body off of a lot of stuff today. and then asuna started copying him,** **can i get two F's in the chat (author salutes and fires rifle)**

 **oh and ARGO likes name dropping inbetween the daft punk poetry now too. who knew**

 **i have a confession to make... i managed to read the very last part of the alicization arc today (13th of June). oh my god it's awesome and crazy. and oh my god it's way too similar to the story i was planning on telling. i thought i was being original D: so i may take a short break from this and focus on one-shots in the works until i feel creative enough to dodge around the similarities.**

 **it got real awkward - but i'm gonna carry on anyway. eventually (mashes the F button again)**

 **thanks for reading :)**


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